Njal´s Saga 19-29

Reading the Njal’s Saga was a totally different experience from that of reading the bible. It is like a story or a short novel that concerns different poeole based on one knowledgable man.

One thing I found very confusing is that they mention a lot of names at the beginning of each chapter and they mention who is the son of who and everyone’s relationship with everyone, even if it doesn’t matter. Which at the end makes it very confusing to know who is who and where did they come from.

I could make two categories or stories of the pages we had to read: The first one would be chapter 19-26 and the other chapter is 26-30. In the first part they introduce a lot of characters but the main is Gunnar they tell e is a man who has a friend called Unn. One day Unn comes to him and tells him she is in a big need for money and she needs his help. Soon Gunnar tells Unn that all his money is at her disposition, but she tells him she doesn’t want that. She tells him that she wants to regain some lands that were hers. So she tells Gunnar to go to Njal who is a very wise man from other lands and that he will give him advice of how she will regain her money back. When he arrives to this man and tells I’m all his issues he says he has a way to save this money. He gives him a set of instructions which include dressing in a cape with hood, taking two men each with two horses (one thin and one large), and telling he is sort of a merchandiser. He then talks to Hrut and they will discus and at the end he will win the argument and regain all the money. And so does this happen just as Njal said so and successfully Gunnar returns the money to Unn. This is basically the same story, we can see that Njal is a very wise man who everyone goes for advise and they all end winning.

The second part of the reading was basically about Njal himself and his sons. It tells a short description of all his sos and their names. Njal has a great urge to marry them and is looking for a wife for every one of them. There is a man names Asgrim who has a daughter and he is marries with one of Njal´s sons. At the feast Gunnar is at the party. I really didn’t understand how the story ended.

To be sincere this is not one of my favorite pieces that we’ve read. I’m more into the Tao Te Ching and the Annalects kind of stuff, but it is always good to read different stuff and learn from it.